2013-09-30

The two participants stay the same, but KC takes back the top spot from Seattle. Seattle is currently so far and above the rest of the NFC that they're sitting at a 95% chance of making the playoffs, and 28.5% chance of winning the conference.

Once again I've put together the strengths of each team based on runs scored and allowed, and done the math on each team's odds of advancing to each round of the playoffs. The length of the series is taken into account as well. Once I found out we'd have a play-in for the play-in game, I had to modify my software a bit, but the numbers still appear to sum up correctly, so I'll call it good.

Team

Strength

LDS

LCS

WS

Win

STL

0.6228

100.00

61.68

36.46

19.77

BOS

0.6184

100.00

61.54

33.06

18.23

DET

0.6100

100.00

53.33

28.12

14.97

ATL

0.6030

100.00

60.09

30.41

15.13

OAK

0.5930

100.00

46.67

22.85

11.29

CIN

0.5774

53.47

22.03

10.78

4.76

TEX

0.5653

27.14

10.81

4.52

1.96

CLE

0.5541

48.86

18.45

7.27

2.97

LAD

0.5499

100.00

39.91

15.58

5.96

PIT

0.5432

46.53

16.29

6.76

2.50

TB

0.5350

22.56

7.76

2.75

1.02

I do have one disclaimer, though. Cleveland shows a lower strength than Texas. However, if Texas and Tampa Bay burn their #1 starters on the pre-play-in play-in, Cleveland's chances should logically improve. These percentages really reflect an average matchup chance, and get more accurate the longer a series is. But a Cleveland-Texas matchup would feature Cleveland's best against Texas's second best, which may or may not tip the scales for Cleveland. Likewise, Boston and St. Louis's chances should be higher, because they'll both have at least a 1-starter advantage over their wildcard opponent.

But in the end, any team can beat any other team in a 1-game playoff. The 100-loss Miami Marlins can even no-hit the playoff-bound Detroit Tigers.

2013-09-29

Once again, my #1 team lost, as LSU fell to Georgia. On a selfish note, this makes the SEC East a bit tougher for Mizzou now, not that I think we had an excellent chance of winning it.

Ohio State snuck up on me and surprised me at #1, though that's largely because they're the only 5-0 team. Still, they've got 5 wins and no one else does.

Both Missouri and Virginia Tech (Hi, Spankee) got votes in the polls last week, though not enough to be ranked. This week, with another win each, we might see them crack the top 25, but probably not quite up to #9 and #11 where I have them.

USC stole a bit of the spotlight this week by firing Lane Kiffin. I only find that somewhat interesting because, after the Rams Thursday Night Football loss, and subsequent local media meltdown, I had a discussion with a friend about firing coaches. We looked up some records, and Mike Martz, seemingly hated by St. Louis fans and media (and ownership), was far better by pretty much any W-L measure than Steve Spagnolo or Scott Linehan. He took the Rams to the playoffs 2 years in a row, going 1-2 in those games, and was fired during the next season. Officially it was at the end, but there was a health leave and some ownership interference; it was clear he was out long before he was out. Yet the Rams were so bad for Linehan, if Spagnolo had taken the Rams to the playoffs even once, he'd have locked up his job for at least a few more years.

Our - probably obvious - conclusion was, it all comes down to expectations. The same can be said at USC. The "real" rankings don't go past 25, or 35 if you extrapolate all the votes, but I've got USC at #47, meaning they're better than nearly 2/3 of teams. If Southern Miss, 0-for-2012, was 3-2 this year, the new coach would already have a 5 year extension. Of course, USC has likely recruited some talent with better potential than other teams, especially being in a big conference and having relative success lately. So the quick hook was likely justified in this case.

The NFL and NCAA are vastly different in terms of signing players and competitive balance, but here's a short but interesting Freakonomics article on the effect of firing the head coach.

2013-09-26

I don't usually buy enough of any one product to come anywhere close to completing an insert set, so I pounced on these insert cards listed at a penny each. I wound up winning 10 for a dime, which I would have gladly paid for the Pujols or Holliday alone. The original insert rate was 1:6, so this represents 60 packs worth of Diamond Stars. There were a few duplicates within the lot, as you can see, but I didn't have any of the 7 unique cards previously. I've still only got 10 of the 25 cards in the set.

These cards are shiny in person, but put next to each other in a scan, and I start to feel dizzy just looking at all the colors, lines, and sparkle.

2013-09-25

The AFC West is shaping up to be a 2-team race between Kansas City and Denver; those two have a combined chance of over 91% of winning the division. I've currently got Kansas City as the stronger team, but not so much so that I'd bet on them to win both games against Denver just yet.

2013-09-23

The top two teams swapped positions, again. Seattle reasserted its dominance with a 45-17 game against Jacksonville. As Jacksonville is the worst team at the moment, I'm glad the top 2 teams have played them, because they are thus at least more comparable to each other.

Carolina is the 3rd best team, with only a 1-2 record. This is a result of their 2 narrow losses by a total of 6 points, and their shutout win by 38 points. If you were to smooth out those points over all 3 games, they'd be 3-0, illustrating my system's preference for point differential over actual wins and losses in projecting future games.

Finally, it's weird to live in a world where the Steelers and Packers are a combined 1-5.

I'll save my Rams bellyaching and hope to instead do some celebrating after this Thursday's game.

2013-09-22

If you lose, you're out of the family. Or at least the #1 spot. Auburn dropped to #9, though they still outrank plenty of 3-0 teams. On the strength of that victory, LSU takes over #1, because LSU's other victories have not been over stellar teams.

The Big 10 is looking pretty strong early in the year, with 2 of the top 5 slots, and 4 of the top 8.

Missouri jumped up to #14, so I'll be interested to see if they even get a vote in any polls this week. Last week they did not.

New Mexico State retains the #124 ranking after losing a squeaker to UCLA, 59-13.

2013-09-20

The top two teams swapped positions, so now the seemingly real Chiefs are projected to beat the Seahawks. As I often state, though, this can be skewed by the fact that they've played a different number of games.

In the NFL, 64 of the games (25%) are inter-conference games, as last night's game was. Having just one game between simulations means I can view the gradient effect of the game. In this case, every NFC team's chances went up just a little bit. This is because, with one less possible win among all NFC teams, the wildcard slots will be slightly easier to attain. Later in the year this effect is usually superseded by the actual records of the teams involved, because if there are a few 10-win teams in a division, it doesn't matter how bad the conference is as a whole, those 10-win teams are both likely making the playoffs. But for now, with the AFC 6-1 against the NFC, the 1-1 Rams or even 0-2 Vikings and Buccaneers can dream of an 8-8 (maybe even 7-9) Wildcard season.

2013-09-19

There are no small trades, only small traders, or something like that. However, I manged to snag these 5 cards for just a Bryce Harper base card in a PWE. This trade came in when Zistle.com first announced their free trial of their enhanced features, which seem to allow for easier matching of want and trade lists, and my trading partner found me.

The cards above were nice, and on my want list, but the two below are of players I really collect.

1990 Leaf # Ozzie Smith
1997 Fleer #193 Mark McGwire

Even though these are two base cards of fairly common sets, I didn't have them yet. The McGwire is especially surprising to me given how much wax I was buying in 1997, and how much McGwire stuff I bought from my LCS in 1998-99.

2013-09-17

Nothing substantial changed after the just the Cincinnati-Pittsburgh Monday night game, except that Cincinnati is now the favorite to win the AFC North, and the once-mighty Steelers are off to an 0-2 start.

2013-09-16

Seattle stomped San Francisco (and my fantasy team QB, Colin Kaepernick) to rise up to be the top team with almost 2 weeks completed. I still can't tell how good Kansas City really is, because Dallas has been some level of dysfunctional for the last 10 years it seems, so I never know if their wins indicate a bad opponent, or their losses indicate a good one. But my algorithm has no such memory, so KC is on top of the AFC.

2013-09-13

I get the feeling New England is mostly here on the strength of being the only team currently 2-0, as well as defeating 2 division rivals, giving them an edge almost as good as New Orleans, who is the only 1-0 team in an otherwise 0-3 division. There are still 239 games to be played, though, so even Jacksonville is still a contender.

2013-09-12

I've got 21 cards out of this set, including the most expensive one, #1 Ken Griffey, Jr. I'd like to complete it eventually, but I've got a little over 97% left to go, but only 75% of the Cardinals, as I've got 7 out of their 28.

2013-09-10

Kansas City over New Orleans
One day I'll write up a clearer explanation, but for now, here's my attempt 2 years ago. In essence, I assign a strength to each team based on their points scored and points allowed, simulate the rest of the season using those strengths, and report their chances of reaching each playoff round.

In week 1, the team with the biggest win is always atop the projections, and Kansas City benefited from a complete domination of Jacksonville. Even though Seattle and Detroit are currently stronger teams than New Orleans, the NFC South is currently a weaker division, increasing New Orleans' chances of making the playoffs, and ultimately making them the NFC favorite. These won't hold up for long, so there's no sense in any deep analyses. Let's just see the numbers.

2013-09-08

NC State sits atop these early season rankings. There are relatively few ties this week, but the rankings are still very tight. The top 40 teams are 2-0, and 19 of the bottom 23 are 0-2. Southern Miss maintains it's winless streak, after an 0-12 2012 and 0-2 so far this year.

2013-09-06

Remember the NCAA basketball tournament from about 6 months ago? I mostly made safe picks this year, and predictably scored "okay" on a scale from awful to fortune teller. However, the rest of the pool in madding's March Radness contest didn't pick enough of the right upsets to defeat me, and I wound up a winner. My prize was a 2013 Heritage blaster, as well as first pick among some singles before 2nd through 4th place got to pick.

First off, the single card

2008 Topps Heritage
T205 Mini #HTCP1 Albert Pujols

This Pujols card is very red, and a little gold. I like it.

With 8 packs in the blaster, I decided to rank them worst to best, based on the insert, short print, or Cardinals contained within.

This was the first pack with 2 "hits" by my generous definition. We've all grown attached to David Freese in St. Louis, but there are rumblings of an offseason trade with such cheap infield talent at AAA ready to arrive. That may also make the Cardinals lots of merchandising money, because plenty of folks will want to go replace their Freese jerseys and t-shirts purchased after his amazing 2011 postseason.